


Law Drummed Out by Hearts

by Prochytes



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Daredevil (TV), Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29901339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: Five women, five friends, in five heartbeats.
Relationships: Jessica Jones & Matt Murdock, Matt Murdock & Colleen Wing, Matt Murdock & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Matt Murdock/Elektra Natchios, Matt Murdock/Karen Page
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. Bless the Freedom that You Never Chose

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the whole runs of _Daredevil_ , _Jessica Jones_ , _Luke Cage_ , _Iron Fist_ , _The Punisher_ , and _The Defenders_. Spoilers for _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ to 2x10: “What They Become”. The title, and the headings for all the chapters, are taken from W. H. Auden’s “Anthem for St. Cecilia’s Day”.

There’s a place, in the Kitchen. The beer is warm, but very cheap. The chink of the barkeep picking up the empties at closing time is slow and deliberate as an ME dropping extracted bullets in a tray. 

Matt meets up in this joint about once a month with Jessica, who did not, as threatened, go to Mexico. When he asks why she stayed, she says it’s because a man you couldn’t say no to, told her not to. Matt considers saying to Jess that she’s the most contrary person he has ever known, because she would immediately deny it. This would be a lawyer move, though, and Matt’s moving – slowly – towards that healthier work-life balance.

Jessica holds forth about the irritations of her clients, whom Matt knows she will never abandon, or let down. On the TV behind the bar, a shopping channel hawks its wares. Jessica will not allow anyone to change the station. 

The channel has only one presenter, now. Even a good Catholic couldn’t teach Jessica much about mortification. 

You’ve got a big heart, Jessica Jones, says Matt, as she finishes an account of a family ( _Can you believe these ass-holes?_ ) whom she has glumly reunited. Jessica snorts. 

A heart just sloshes liquid, she says. You wouldn’t call the Manhattan Pump Station a humanitarian. A big heart doesn’t make you a good person. 

Matt sits back, and listens. The resting rate of the human heart is usually somewhere around sixty to seventy beats per minute; in sportspeople, somewhere between forty and fifty. The heart of Jessica Jones tolls twenty times per minute. Strength defines her, and not just the kind that picks up cars. 

Doesn’t exclude it, either, he says.

In the background, the shopping channel waxes eloquent on cashmere. Jessica harrumphs – uneasy, as ever, at even the ghost of praise – and changes the subject.


	2. Startle Composing Mortals with Immortal Fire

These days, Matt spars regularly with Colleen. The routine centres both of them. With Stick gone, Danny far away, Elektra… it’s not like there are many others that can keep up. 

Colleen serves green tea afterwards, her hands deft and quick on the china as they are to block and strike. They discuss patrolling: schedules; routes; intimations of trouble. 

Colleen is much alone, now. Danny and Ward Meachum are on the other side of the world. Misty is snowed under at the Precinct – problems pouring out of Harlem’s Paradise, where Luke Cage still can’t decide whether he’s Adam, Eve, the Serpent, or the Tree. Even Ward’s sister and her merc are off somewhere finding themselves. The quality (and quantity) of those selves are, in Matt’s view, open to question. 

It’s all fine, Colleen says. She’s on top of this. 

Matt knows that a righteous crusade can yet mask frustration, anger, doubt. Colleen’s voice is resolute; he wants to believe her. Matt does not think that Danny’s decision – conveyed to Colleen, apparently, by a lame-assed note – to play kung-fu Abelard and Eloise was kind, or wise. But Matt is hardly the king of psychologically healthy. 

Matt hopes that Colleen is, indeed, on top of this. He hopes still more that she is on top of the other thing. Colleen stays within human limits when they spar. Only seldom, in the field, does he hear that athlete’s heart of hers, however taxed by battle, slow, and still, and yield to the beat of the other Heart that is in Colleen – the one that pumps Armageddon rage _behind_ Creation, like blood behind an artery’s quaking walls.

Colleen’s hand, when she clasps his wrist in farewell, is warm, and still redolent of her tea. Hope is a virtue; Matt tries to abide in it.


	3. I Have No Shadow to Run Away From

Sometimes, it’s a hint of jasmine, on the dawn breezes that snuggle close around the water towers above Manhattan. Sometimes, it’s a lately abandoned plate of food (coffee, fries, and sumptuous lox weaving their tapestry of savours on the air) beside a massive tip, and a closing door, on the other side of the diner Matt’s just entered.

More often, it’s a pulse: one bright thread of sound showing through, for a moment, on another rooftop, over the twilit ravines of the Kitchen, or across a crowded room, on those New York nights that are only too enchanted. It’s a little different - after the Hand, and Midland Circle, how could it not be? 

It’s still her.

She’s never there, once Matt has vaulted to that other rooftop, or worked his way, with laboured politeness, across the room. Perhaps he has misheard. But Matt, when in good health, cannot mishear: any more than Luke can break, or Jessica can flag, or the kid in Queens can fall off walls. 

Matt has heard that heart at work, at play, in battle, and in bed (to make distinctions that its owner never did). It’s playing their song, somewhere. The rooftop is deserted; the room is crowded.

Somewhere.


	4. The Angels Dancing Came Out of Their Trance

Daisy attends the memorial service for Father Paul. Matt immediately knows her. Daisy Johnson still wears the same cheap lip-balm that Mary Sue Poots used to shoplift. The habits of the orphanage die hard. 

She comes up at the end to thank Matt for his eulogy, and exchange many memories. Daisy’s voice is warm; there is a measure of constraint. The occasion, no doubt, contributes to this. Mary never had much taste for Matt’s religion – not, he now realizes, talking to her as a woman grown, because she had too little belief, but because she had too much. Daisy Johnson overflows with faith: she cannot cram it in the narrow sky. 

Daisy’s embarrassment has a second cause. Matt is certain, almost as soon as she opens her mouth, that she knows about his other life. This is not altogether unexpected. Mary Sue Poots sniffed secrets the way some other kids sniffed glue; Daisy Johnson is not all she seems. For one thing, Daisy now knows how to fight. Matt hears her weight distribution in the floorboards. Athletic muscle slides, unconsciously, from one centred stance into another. Daisy chatters brightly all the while. 

Above all, there’s the matter of her heartbeat. Daisy’s pulse is too fast for a fit young woman; too fast for any woman; too fast any longer to be human. There is more. Daisy’s body gathers and sculpts, somehow, the throb of her own heart, and the vibrations of all else around her – a riff upon the rhythms of the world, the universe delightedly jamming with itself. _There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st, but in his motion like an angel sings…_

Are you happy? Matt asks. The sudden question startles him as much as her. Daisy gives it the grave attention he remembers from her girlhood. 

I’m doing good, she says, at last. And then she whispers, conspiratorial as the old Mary: _So are you._

Matt smiles. When Daisy leaves – a strange life, for a moment athwart his own – he lingers for a while, but then goes out of the church into the singing world with a step a little lighter than he entered.


	5. The Huge Flame Flickered and Eased Their Pain

At Nelson, Murdock, and Page, life goes on. There’s still a crappy office. There are still chickens.

Karen continues to find time for her own projects. This means that she will sometimes, for example, limp shoeless into work, smelling of hospitals and Frank Castle (two scents which tend to go together). Matt is not especially content about this caper, but holds his peace: Matt Murdock now knows, and Daredevil needs to remember, that the universe does not hinge on his contentment. _You’re a born advocate, Matt,_ Foggy would say, _but a lousy judge._

Karen’s is a human heartbeat. Not “standard”, or “normal”, or “typical”; if you burn in the world on fire, you know there’s no such thing. Human. Strong at rest, and moderately slow, but easily stirred by exertion, by triumph or travail, or by fear. Fear will never leave Karen – the risks she takes, for herself and for others, make sure of that – but she’s lived with it for long enough to think of it as a neighbour.

You’re staring, she says.

I can’t stare. Part of the package.

OK, then, you’re listening aggressively.

Matt scoffs, and throws a scrunched up leaf from a legal pad at her head. Karen catches it; she’s been working at those reflexes. Foggy sighs theatrically; the telephone rings. Nelson, Murdock, and Page go back to work.

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> Matt thinks of lines from _The Merchant of Venice_ Act Five Scene One when talking to Daisy.


End file.
